The surveillance story: The rest of us

Please provide me all records of any communications in any form from January 23, 2013 through today, inclusive, regarding Yes!Weekly, including but not limited to any records documenting discussing options for or attempts to restrain the paper's distribution. 
-- Records request made of the City of Greensboro yesterday by this blogger

Last September, I met with Yes!Weekly publisher Brian Clarey and reporter Eric Ginsburg to discuss my interest in writing a story about the extent and means by which the City of Greensboro conducts surveillance on its citizens. My interest in writing about the subject was inspired by the slow walk and outright denials that met my requests for records about the subject from the City last summer. It is documented that the City responds to records requests faster for employees of the media than for other citizens and I thought Yes!'s additional resources might add some muscle to my efforts. While we couldn't work out a suitable arrangement, I'm glad that Yes! decided to pursue the story on their own.

Reporter Eric Ginsburg has discovered some important and disturbing information about how the police monitor certain groups, including a rather astonishing email in which a police sergeant identifies City Councilor Marikay Abujuatier as a confidential informant. Ginsburg's story is a must read, deploying the kind of fearless skepticism Greensboro counts on from its alternate weeklies and opening our eyes to the unseen activities of our local government.

The Rest of Us

There is another question, however, that remains unanswered: To what extent are rest of us—the public at large—being monitored while we go about our business under the impression that we are doing so in obscurity.

Since July of last year, I have been trying to get an answer to that question through public records requests. It began simply enough, with a request for records documenting the number and location of surveillance cameras. Some cameras are in public view, on streets and in parking decks, but what, I wondered, is the full extent of this watching?

How many cameras does the City deploy that are less obvious than those you'll see at some intersections, if you look; cameras like those in and pointing out from City buses? What about cameras intentionally hidden? (Ginsburg reports of a cop in disguise, riding on a float in the Fourth of July Parade and recording video from a camera hidden in the horn of a trumpet.) Does the city deploy cameras that track and pan to follow people? Are they also recording sound? Who is watching what they record?

It is known that private foundations have purchased surveillance cameras to be trained on public spaces, such as those purchased by Action Greensboro to surveill the Greenway. Who's monitoring those cameras? Who is watching the video recorded by the cameras in the quasi-public space of Center City Park? When and why?

Greensboro has never had a public discussion, much less implemented any policy directives addressing the extent and means by which government or agents acting on its behalf monitor the public at-large. A good place to start, I thought, would be with an understanding of the degree to which such surveillance is underway. Thus I made my request for this information.

Request Denied

My request was denied by the city attorney who maintained that a state law passed after 9/11 and intended to protect infrastructure from terrorists permits cities to keep records about the number and location of surveillance cameras secret. That law does not mandate that the City must keep such information secret, just that, in the city attorney's opinion, it gives them the option of doing so and he chose to exercise that option, denying me records that would report the location and number of surveillance cameras.

I attempted to get Mayor Robbie Perkins and City Manager Denise Turner to intervene but neither took any action of which I'm aware to reverse or challenge the City Attorney's opinion, acquiescing to it through their inaction.

A Different Approach

Confronted with that refusal, I attempted to ascertain the information through requests for records that would be more clearly mandated as public and subject to disclosure, such as purchase records or recordings of video from these cameras. The ensuing slog resulted in an incomplete picture, the city attorney continued to use the anti-terrorism law to withhold records that would provide clear and definitive information. Some records were released; video from the libraries (after hours to protect patron anonymity) was provided, for example, while video from buses (inside or out) was not.

An important component to my requests was for information about who is watching. The response to my request for records documenting that access was suspiciously thin. I received a single record, clearly not a copy of any original record, described as being a redacted compilation of log files of internet access to unspecified cameras by persons described as "security guards."

Are other people monitoring surveillance cameras? Is the City keeping records of who is watching and why? It has been, thus far, impossible to definitively document an answer to either of those questions but the single record of access by security guards does not inspire confidence.

The Next Step

It is incredibly frustrating for an individual citizen to find themselves in an adversarial role against government workers when attempting to find out what our government is up to. City employees get paid whether they provide records or not. Without loud and clear directives to cooperate with citizens or risk losing their jobs, their cooperation is capricious. A recent change in state law allows for the prevailing party in a records lawsuit to collect the cost of suing for records from a municipality found to have improperly kept records secret, but that is an even more time consuming proposition that relies on either the deep pockets this bloggers does not have or an interested attorney this blogger does not know.

The next best thing is a robust press. It is such a worn out refrain to lament the News & Record's lack of initiative on these kinds of stories that it is almost not worth mentioning and yet... and local TV news has a hard time with these kinds of stories, so not much is expected from them. That leaves the alternative weeklies.

Of course, the real responsibility lies with us. It is our government, after all, and we live in a democracy—a representative democracy. Despite keeping city council apprised of my efforts and of the city's responses, our representatives have been ineffective in getting the city to reveal details of its public surveillance. There is an election this fall, however. Until then, Ginsburg is our best hope.

Hey, Grits!

Hey Grits,

Do you see yet why not allowing anonymous comments might have consequences beyond your assumptions?

Excuse me, I Twarted™*

Why do people share things on the Internet? Is it because they have made, thought or captured something truly worth sharing or is it because sharing something— anything—no matter how insignificant or meaningless, makes one feel significant?

It's not that I think everything should be some masterwork of creative genius. The Tweets that tell us Justin Bieber changed your life are not terrible really (they remind us, in few words, of the power of music and the optimism of youth), but intentionally degraded photos without any subject or sense of composition, cell phone video that sounds like it's coming from some not-tuned-in A.M. radio station playing through the blown speakers of a 1972 Gremlin, vapid statements of the obvious and thirteen minutes of "and then...", "and then...", "and then..." telling us about your day, starting with, "So I woke up," are just drivel.

If you're posting such twaddle, is it because you are unable to recognize or create quality or is it because you are so insecure that the point is not what you post, but to post anything in a desperate hope that you won't be insignificant?

* Twart: A Tweet or other social media post as welcomed and interesting as the emission of bodily gas.

Guilford County's information director leaves fine legacy

GREENSBORO, NC --The Rhino Times reports that Guilford County's Chief Information Officer Barbara Weaver is retiring at the end of this month. You may remember her as presiding over the county's website redesign fiasco a couple of years ago. But congratulations to Ms. Weaver for going out on a high note and leaving behind a wonderful new piece of technology for the residents of Guilford County.

I'm referring to the County's new Geographical Information Systems (GIS) Data Viewer. While it requires the download and installation of Microsoft's proprietary Silverlight, that's done easily enough with a click and the rewards are great.

The Data Viewer is smooth and speedy at its primary function, which is to access property records, but it also adds some interesting tools such as community information, which reports things like the elected representatives for a property as well as nearby parks.

The viewer also has some sophisticated drawing tools that allow for the measurement of distances and area or to get information about all properties within a shape you draw. I used this yesterday to get the length of a circuit on some trails around Lake Brandt

One can also overlay maps from other sources and perform thematic mapping, whereby one selects an area of the map then applies color coding to the properties within based on criteria such as year built, value or property type. One can even export data from the map results.

Thank you, Ms. Weaver (and the other, I'm sure, good staff people who helped) for bringing us this state-of-the-art tool for better understanding our community.

Google warns of News & Record website: "May harm your computer"

GREENSBORO, NC -- I've seen a lot of things in my (almost) fifty years, but I have never seen anything to rival the pigheaded refusal by the News & Record to achieve minimal competence on the web. They either have the most unimaginable incompetents in charge or some sort of passive aggressive death wish. Even without my personal puzzlement that they shut the door on offers of help from the highly qualified yours truly, their inability to otherwise find any path to minimal quality, much less excellence, is astonishing.

On the heels of their disastrous website launch—delayed, dysfunctional and wiping away years of archives—they have now allowed portions of their site to become infected with malware, leading Google to mark search results with warnings not to visit.

"This site may harm your computer," advises Google.

Dare to click on a link and Google gives you another warning, suggesting that you turn back:

If you insist on continuing, your installed anti-virus software will give you a message like this:

Google's details explain: "Of the 298 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 11 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent."

At this rate, and I'm not joking or exaggerating, the News & Record will be defunct in six months, for which the only upside would be that Greensboro will be rid of a source of great public embarrassment.

(Tip of the chapeau to Lex, who brought the malware to our attention.)

So you want to make things for the Internet? Try Lynda and Larry

I love learning. I think it is because I've had some great teachers, not the least of whom were my parents, but whom also included inspiring math teachers Mrs. Huckabee and Mrs.Williams, science teachers Mr. Huffaker and Mrs. Stone, the great team of Mrs. Banks and Mr. Cornelius (who took some of his sixth graders target shooting, of all things)  and the wonderful English teacher Mrs. Johnson (for whom I once dressed in a delivery uniform to deliver a rat in a box to someone -- long story).

The point is, I fondly remember and have a genuine appreciation of these people, not just because they were decent and kind, but because I was aware that they were making me smarter; made me smarter. What a gift, to be able to teach well.

Multiple times a day, I turn to search results for answers to specific web development questions, but when it comes to learning how to make things for the internet—actually increasing comprehension and building and a body of knowledge—there are two resources I would recommend for anybody with similar interests. They aren't magic—they take time and concentration—but they have the distinction of providing a great knowledge-gained to time-spent ratio. They teach well.

The first is Larry Ullman, whose book PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Websites (thanks, Paul!), opened my eyes to a whole new way of thinking about what it means to build for the Internet, inspiring me to think beyond just design and in terms of the total experience. He has some other worthwhile books too.

The second is not a person, more accurately, it's a collection or people: the instructors behind the video lessons at Lynda.com. These folks are good and, while I've never before seriously attempted to undertake a course of study by narrated video, I'm finding it to be a very efficient means of learning.  Some instructors are better than others, no doubt (especially Joe Marini and Simon Alardice), and you may run into an occasional instructor whose narrative style or vocal quality makes it hard to stay with the lesson, but most are very good teachers.

I initially expected that I might watch a few videos at Lynda.com during my free trial and that would be it. When the trial expired, I thought I would pay the $25/month fee just to maintain access to a couple more courses that had caught my eye. Six months later, I remain subscribed, have completed or have underway twelve courses and have eighteen more in my que.

If you want to learn how to make stuff for the Internet, or already know how to do some things but want to learn more, from beginner to advanced, you'll find both the books of Larry Ullman and the video lessons at Lynda.com great resources.

An open letter to some local media types

Dear Frank Mickens and Allen Johnson,

You gentlemen hold positions of importance within your news organizations. I assume that's because somebody thinks you know how to do your jobs, which I also assume means knowing how to communicate in the modern age.

It seems as if somehow you missed a ten second lesson on hyperlinks. You should try it, all the kids are doing it, and when we read posts by you (Frank's, Alllen's) that refer to something elsewhere on the Internet but that don't offer us any way to get there, well, it makes you look a bit like an old fogey — especially when your link-free text is telling us "look at this story."

So, here it is, in three easy steps, at no charge to you:

1. Highlight and copy the URL (link) for the article, post or tweet you are referencing.

2. Immediately prior to the text you wish to make into a link, type this:

<a href="thelinkyoujustcopied">

Replace thelinkyoujustcopied with the link you just copied leaving everything else, including the quotation marks, intact.

3. Immediately after the text you want to turn into a link, type this:

</a>

That's all there is to it. Welcome to 90's.

Cordially,
Roch

My next project

The essentials of the new Greensboro 101 are stable and working as intended. While I still have some significant work to do to upgrade the events calendar, I'm going to begin work a new project today: A web app for managing local campaigns, Greensboro city council campaigns to start.

At this point, I have a few specific ideas about what it should do, including contact, communications, scheduling, fundraising and reporting management integrated with geolocation (although, I hope I haven't just over-reached). Think about it for a minute, and you can probably imagine the possibilities for candidates as they are able to manage their campaigns while moving about the city with an app aware of where they are and who is nearby.

If you plan on running for office or otherwise think you might have a good idea for such an app, please let me know. You can leave a comment here or email me.

[edited @ 10:11 for clarity.]

What is pretty darn hard?

I just took the Jeopardy qualifying test. Fifty questions, some brain freeze. Maybe I got 20 right.

Verio Review: A case study in how to kill a good company

In 2002 I became a customer of Verio, a web hosting company, for a Virtual Private Server (VPS). At the time, they were top-notch. The best. Their support people were experts who had the distinction of almost always resolving an issue, no matter how complicated or originally mystifying, with a single contact. That's why I stayed with them for just over ten years: I was in good hands.

Why I left is a sad study of how to kill a great company, a case that I would not be surprised presages the demise of this company.

At some time in the Fall of 2011, Verio got rid of their expert support personnel and outsourced their support to a third party. Support is now routed to people with poor English language abilities and with even worse technical knowledge.

I don't care where a support person is from or where they are located if we can collaborate to successfully resolve an issue—competence is the bottom line—but when we have difficulties understanding each other and when issues drag on for days requiring multiple contacts, often leaving issues unresolved or fixed only by my own research elsewhere, that's unacceptable.

I have some pretty good knowledge and experience maintaining a web server. I don't know it all. I'm not an expert, but I know a lot, so when I need tech support, it is likely either for an advanced issue or because something has gone awry at the host that they need to fix. In the year that I stayed with Verio after they outsourced their support, I found dealing with them to be maddening in its futility.

Experiences included:

• Getting replies that appeared to be robotic attempts to divine a keyword or phrase in my support request without comprehending the context in which I might have mentioned "domain name," "reboot" or "user."
• Getting instructions that were about the keyword or phrase they had identified in general instead of addressing the particulars of my specific situation. This lead to things like receiving instructions to repeat the very steps I had just taken that lead to an error.
• Advice that was ineffective or irrelevant. 
• Emails that advised, "Reply to this email if you have more questions," that, when replied to, were returned with a message that "This is not a valid support email address."
• Joyful emails announcing that my issue had been resolved and the ticket closed even though the issue had not been resolved.
• Refusal to provide contact with management.
• When I found a phone number for U.S. corporate headquarters (in corporate filings, not on any Verio websites), it was never answered by a live person and messages left where not returned. Not one. Not even the ones that said, "I'm a ten-year customer and you're about to lose me."

It's a remarkable shame that Verio could fall so far. Remarkable because they were so superior at one time, a shame because their degradation wasn't from circumstances beyond their control—they didn't suffer a natural disaster or hostile takeover—people in positions of authority and responsibility made decisions—conscious and intentional decisions—that may have netted a couple years of executive bonuses, but that likely have mortally wounded this company. (No wonder they don't want to answer the phone.)

If you've stumbled upon this post as someone considering Verio as a hosting company, my advice is unequivocal: Don't do it, you'll be sorry.

WFMY/Asheboro Courier Tribune, who copied whom?

GREENSBORO, NC -- Articles about record setting attendance at the North Carolina Zoo appear today on the websites of WFMY and Asheboro's Courier-Tribune. The WFMY article says it was "Written by WFMY," the Courier-Tribune article is unattributed. They both have paragraphs that are identical to each other. Who copied whom? Or did they both copy someone else?

Here is the article as it appeared on WFMY's website, the highlighted portions are identical to the Courier Tribune article:

Asheboro, NC-- If there is one place in North Carolina that people can't get enough of its the Zoo.

Visitors who went last year probably felt a little crowded and that's because NC Zoo officials said they recorded the highest attendance in 15 years, in 2012.

What brought the crowds? Zoo officials credit several factors for the increased numbers in 2012, including the popularity of "Dinosaurs," a temporary exhibit featuring 15 animatronic replicas of creatures that roamed the earth millions of years ago. The park also saw the arrival of several noteworthy newborns during the calendar year, including a baby chimp in January, a new giraffe in July and not one, but two infant gorillas in August.

The gorilla deliveries marked only the second and third births of the highly endangered primates in N.C. Zoo history. The first had occurred 23 years before.

Zoo records [sic] Attendance [sic] for the recently completed 12-month period reached 761,964 visitors, the highest total since 1997 when 764,720 people passed through the zoo's gates.

In addition, 2012 ranked as the fifth highest calendar-year total in park history. The all-time record of 840,410 was set in 1995 on the heels of grand opening ceremonies for the zoo's second continental exhibit region, North America.

The other top-five marks were set in 1994 with 811,655 visitors and 1996 at 764,286

Plagiarism resumes at WFMY

GREENSBORO, NC — After repeated instances of plagiarism ( here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here), it looked like WFMY staff had finally stopped taking credit for things they did not write. They resumed today.

An article on their website under the grammatically incorrect headline of "A&T's Powell, Beckford Earns MEAC Weekly Honors" is identified as "Written by Brian Hall."

The article is actually a complete and identical copy of a press release from N.C. A&T University. Here is the article, the highlighted portions were copied.

GREENSBORO - North Carolina A&T put together its first two-game winning streak of the season in men's basketball and it was in large part due to the play of senior forward Adrian Powell and freshman center Bruce Beckford.

After wins over Radford at home and Georgia Southern on the road, both men were rewarded for their efforts with MEAC weekly honors. Powell earned MEAC Player of the Week for the first time in his career, while Beckford earned his second MEAC Rookie of the Week acknowledgement this season.

Powell (6-6, 188, Conover, N.C.) scored 43 points, grabbed 14 rebounds, recorded six steals and blocked three shots for the week. In the process, he shot 57.7 percent from the field, was 3-for-7 from 3-point range and 10-for-12 from the free throw line.

Beckford (6-7, 215, Silver Spring, Md.) started the week by scoring 15 points and grabbing a season-high nine rebounds in the Aggies 81-77 win over Radford on Wednesday. He followed up by hitting two crucial shots in the final minutes of the Aggies 71-65 win over Georgia Southern on Saturday.

With the game tied at 56 with four minutes remaining, Beckford pump faked twice and went up for a tough layup in the paint to give A&T the lead. After GSU tied it on its next possession, Beckford hit a baseline jumper to give A&T a 60-58 lead with 2:51 remaining. It was a lead the Aggies never relinquished. For the week, Beckford scored 24 points, grabbed 13 rebounds, blocked three shots and had three steals.

The Aggies are back in action Saturday, Jan. 12 when they travel to Daytona Beach, Fla., to face Bethune-Cookman at 4 p.m. The Aggies have not won in Daytona Beach in 18 years. 

Welcome to the new Greensboro 101

The old is new again. It's a river of streams, a finger on the pulse, an end run around the gate keepers and a level playing field, lightly curated™. I hope you enjoy.